SNOBELEN: Time to try a different approach to tackle climate change

The steel mills on the Hamilton waterfront harbour are shown in Hamilton, Ont., on Tuesday, October 23, 2018. Canada's push to be a world leader in the fight against climate change may be hampered by its distinction for producing the most greenhouse gas emissions per person among the world's 20 largest economies. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Those with long memories will recall the Kyoto Protocol was the first global economic document written entirely by environmentalists.

As economic agreements go, it was a doozy.

Building on the sagacious work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the bold folks who met in Kyoto, Japan created a new global currency based on a common essential element, carbon.

In the stroke of a pen (actually 192 pen strokes from the initial signatories), the environmentalists had turned air into hard currency. Not a bad trick.

But the UN folks had even greater aspirations.

The environmental warriors set out for global climate revenge by making the developed world (read the U.S.) pay the developing world (read China) for past carbon sins.

They devised a plan, aptly named the Green Investment Scheme (GIS), to transfer wealth from “rich” nations.

The unblinking climate cabal gathered in Paris in 2015 to do global carbon pricing again, this time harder, louder and faster.

Demonstrators gather near the Arc de Triomphe as a French flag floats during a protest of yellow vests against rising oil prices and living costs, on December 1, 2018 in Paris. (AFP/Getty Images)- /
AFP/Getty Images

Based on the yellow vest protests in France, the Paris Agreement isn’t doing so well either.

Notwithstanding all of this, the Trudeau government is hurtling into an election whipping carbon taxing (and taxpayers) as hard as they can.

The theory, I suppose, is that folks can be persuaded Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and the world is dependent on Canada adopting a carbon pricing scheme that other nations are resisting.

This is a level of absurdity that can only be attained when you apply harder, faster and louder to a failed idea.

I suspect if Bill Horn was still with us, he would tell the Trudeau government’s climate warriors that it’s time to do something wrong.